Snow White & The Huntsman: How to tell a fairy story.

I'm taking a small break from our regularly scheduled Avengers overanalysis to bring you some LADIES IN ARMOUR.

Today Florence + The Machine released their theme song/music video for Snow White & The Huntsman. I'm not really a Florence fan, but this video is just TOO GOOD FOR ME TO COPE WITH because it combines clips from the (completely awesome-looking) Snow White trailer with war drums and dramatic Valkyrie wailing and somehow, somehow... I am totally sold. After listening to this song and rewatching the trailer, not only am I 100% prepared to declare Kristen Stewart my Khaleesi For Life, but I'm also convinced that I've somehow regressed to the age of 11 because OMG new feminist role-model. Which is slightly embarrassing because I just googled Kristen Stewart and it turns out she's several months younger than I am. But what can I do? I've already sworn fealty. I'm taking up my spear and following Snow White into battle. And so are you.

MY KHALEESI.

Can I just say how awesome it is that they've made a freaking war movie out of a fairytale that's popularly known as the story of a bitter old lady who poisons a girl for being prettier than she is? In these trailers we see Snow White being betrayed and abandoned and strong and sliding through the mud and LEADING AN ARMY. The thing that blows me away the most -- more than the Guillermo Del Toro-esque troll creatures; more than Charlize Theron's fabulous costumes -- is the fact that Snow White is a passionate warrior. The #1 flaw in action/adventure movies is that their protagonists run the risk of ending up as two-dimensional badasses. A lot of the time the emotional hook just isn't truthful enough to engage audiences outside of the basic demographic of "people who like to watch things blow up". Which, by the way, isn't a criticism of that demographic because I fully intend to watch any and all Die Hard sequels, even if they rate 3% on Rotten Tomatoes and consist of a 76-year-old Bruce Willis standing in front of a blue-screen and yelling nonsensical one-liners while people frantically Photoshop burning cars into the background.

Not gonna lie: I basically want both of their outfits to wear in real life.

But Kristen Stewart's Snow White isn't just a badass. During every action clip included in those trailers, you can see the desperation and determination on her face. You feel -- or at least I felt -- a genuine desire to find out why she's having to fight, rather than just treating the fight clips as a sort of placeholder code for "this film includes battle scenes". Is this what movies are like in a post-Game Of Thrones world? We can only hope. 

Unusually for me and my habit of nerding out over behind-the-scenes details, I don't actually know much about SW&TH. And in contrast with more specifically geek-oriented films like Prometheus or the Avengers franchise, I don't really feel that info-dumping is even necessary. Unlike Tarsem's visually wonderful but otherwise unappealing Mirror Mirror earlier this year, the marketing for SW&TH has managed the ideal maneuver for a fairytale adaptation: they've made a familiar story seem intriguing without changing it so much that it seems unrecognisable.

These days, movies based on well-known myths tend to go one of two ways: egregious levels of grittiness, or tongue-in-cheek parody. This follows the same mould as superhero movies, wherein the Batman myth evolves from Adam West cartoonishness to Christopher Nolan's apparent belief that as long as you include enough shots of grim Chicago skyscrapers in the rain, you can make a 100% "realistic" urban epic about people who dress up in pleather catsuits in order to fight crime. For me, gritty superhero adaptations can sometimes work, but gritty fairytales? Not so much. Just look at Russell Crowe's Robin Hood, which removed everything that was ever charming or appealing about Robin Hood and replaced it with endless footage of Russell Crowe glaring at mud. The greatest source of tension in that movie was me desperately waiting for Russell Crowe to take a bath because he clearly smelled so bad, but that never happened. Even when Cate Blanchett's servants poured him a bath he just splashed some of the water on his face and was like, "well, I guess that takes care of all the Saracen blood I've accrued over the past decade of war-mongering". HE NEVER DID TAKE THAT BATH, YOU GUYS.

This is literally the cleanest he ever is in this entire movie.

(Oh, and another thing that bugged me about that movie was that all the supposed realism was meant to add a "historical" edge to the mostly-fictional Robin Hood we know and love, except none of the history was remotely accurate. As in, the film ended with -- spoiler alert for a movie you definitely shouldn't see! -- Robin Hood revealing that his dad wrote the Magna Carta and Cate Blanchett leading an army of tree-dwelling orphan boys to fight off a French invasion on a beach in Dover. For realsies.)

"But Hello, Tailor!" you may (possibly) be asking. "Snow White & The Huntsman looks like it's all about muddy people in nonspecifically medieval armour as well! How can you say it's going to be any better than Russell Crowe's embarrassing attempts to modernise an English folk-hero?"

The answer is: because SW&TH gives every impression of having reached a happy middle ground. Disney already has the market cornered on happy, colourful fairytales, and we know from Robin Hood and Clive Owen's King Arthur that going all-out "historical" (sorry, I can't help but stick some sarcastic air-quotes in there, I'm an asshole) is unpopular. With this film, the trailer gives a darker, more adult hook for Snow White in the form of her new role as a Bourne-esque fugitive and fighter, but we still get to have the more fantastic elements of unicorns, trolls, magic mirrors and so on. Sometimes Kristen Stewart wears a bodice and floor-length skirt that distantly resemble a dirtier version of Snow White's outfit from the Disney cartoon, but when she rides into battle she's wearing armour. Real armour, as opposed to the leather bikini Keira Knightly had to wear when she was playing Pagan Guinevere in the oh-so-historical King Arthur movie. You know that Kristen Stewart's character is Snow White because she looks like Snow White, but you also know she's a warrior because she looks like a warrior as well.

Seems legit. This is basically how everyone dresses in the UK.

Postscript: As of just now, this is the first news headline that comes up when you google Snow White & The Huntsman: "Charlize Theron v Kristen Stewart at Snow White premiere: Hot or Not?" Wow, Internet. I think you just summarised in one sentence everything that's going to be wrong about all the coverage for this movie!